A Cease-fire Takes Hold in Ukraine as Territorial Questions Linger
Parts of Ukraine risk becoming another Soviet “frozen conflict.”
A
pro-separatist rebel stands with the flag of Novorossiya (New Russia)
in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in July. This week, the same
flags were flying in Novoazovsk, newly seized by pro-Russian forces.
Photograph by Maxim Zmeyev, Reuters
Published September 6, 2014
A cease-fire has been called in embattled Ukraine, one that
many world leaders are skeptical will last. Yet even as the fighting
that had flared along Ukraine's strategic southeastern coast Thursday
fell silent in the hours after the cease-fire was announced, larger
questions about the territory of Ukraine remain, as does a vow from
separatists to split from Ukraine entirely.
The details of the cease-fire, signed in Minsk by
negotiators representing the Ukrainian government, the separatists,
Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
include amnesty for fighters who disarm and have not committed serious
crimes, the disbanding of militias, the release of hostages, and a
ten-kilometer buffer zone to be created along the Russian-Ukrainian
border, according to news reports.
The deal states that power would be decentralized—with an appointed
governor to be granted control of provinces—and also includes provisions
regarding the protection of the Russian language and early elections.
But realities on the ground may be different, Russian news
agencies report. Igor Plotnitsky, one of the rebel leaders of the
self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, says, "The cease-fire does
not mean a shift from our course of breaking away from Ukraine. This is a
compulsory measure."
The agreement, says experts, already signals Ukraine's weakness and potential loss of territory.
"This is definitely a loss for Ukraine," says Faith Hillis,
assistant professor of Russian history at the University of Chicago and
author of Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation.
She says the first question is whether the cease-fire will hold, but
"this looks as if Ukraine will lose parts of the east, whether through a
federalization scheme or some sort of autonomy reached for the region.
Parts of Ukraine could end up as a 'frozen conflict.' " If so, they
would join several other post-Soviet regions with unresolved political
status, like South Ossetia, Abkhazia, or Transdniestria, the breakaway
state located between the Dniester River and Moldova's eastern border
with Ukraine.
Recent pro-Russian territorial gains included strategic
territory that could hasten the forging of a land bridge to the
geographically isolated Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia
annexed in the hastily called referendum last March, all the while
occupying prized coastline along the way. The most recent fighting was
centered around the southeastern port city of Mariupol on the Sea of
Azov, with its potential oil and gas reserves. In nearby Novoazovsk,
flags of the so-called Novorossiya (New Russia) Army were already
flying.
Juan José Valdés, Lauren James, NG Staff. Sources:
Information and Analysis Center of the National Security and Defence
Council of Ukraine; OpenStreetMap; GADM; PortNews
The Kerch Strait separates Crimea from Russia and
demarcates the Sea of Azoz from the Black Sea. Hitler once tried to
build a bridge across the 2.5-mile-wide expanse, but the Nazis were
foiled by the advancing Red Army. Putin has called for a new rail and
road bridge there.
Photograph by Serguei Fomine, Russian Look/Corbis
New Russia
The term Novorossiya itself carries an implication of
aggression, harkening back to an era of Russian imperial expansion in
present-day southern Ukraine, when vast swaths of the region were won
from the Ottoman Empire by Catherine the Great and ruled from up north.
But however one chooses to label the land, having a
foothold there—either through continued fighting or as a result of
frozen gains due to a cease-fire—is a crucial link to Crimea.
"There is a supply issue," says Professor Hillis. "Crimea was part of Ukraine since 1954, and its food, energy, and water supply was all piped in from mainland Ukraine."
By taking the region, pro-Russian entities would have an
easier time transporting supplies to Crimea because they would control
the mainland closest to the peninsula.
Ukrainian soldiers ride on a tank in the port city
of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine. A ceasefire in the embattled areas
of eastern and southwestern Ukraine was declared Friday.
Photograph by Sergei Grits, AP
Putin's Plan?
The second thing Putin is after "is the historical notion
of New Russia. Putin is bringing this up now not only as a way to create
a connection to Crimea," Hillis says, but also "to leave the Ukrainian
state divided and fractured and to create a psychological impact as
well."
The pro-Russian forces that had pushed along the coast of
Ukraine, however, are just the latest in a line of invaders, occupiers,
and settlers from ancient times to the present who have tried to occupy
this strategic stretch.
A Ukrainian soldier rests as he patrols territory
close to a Ukrainian checkpoint near the town of Gorlovka. Fighting was
reportedly still ongoing in the city of Mariupol hours after a ceasefire
was declared Friday.
Photograph by Roman Pilipey, EPA/Corbis
The Wild Fields
For centuries it was a no-man's-land. "They called it the Wild Fields," says Charles King, professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and author of The Black Sea: A History.
"The Wild Fields was a term used for a good part of all the
area north of Crimea," he says. "This was a term used by Slavs, in the
era before the large-scale colonization of the 18th century, because it
was a kind of buffer between the Muscovite princes in the north and the Tatars in Crimea, who
were in league with, and notionally subservient to, the Ottoman
sultans. And in between them was this kind of vast cordon of steppeland
or what we would call prairie."
It was also "flat and easy to conquer," adds the University
of Chicago's Hillis. "It was raided by the Mongols in the 13th century
and very badly depopulated. As a result, after that it was a borderland
for many centuries between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire."
The area was called the Wild Fields "essentially because it
was, well, a big field," she explains. "But also because it was
populated by a ragtag group of settlers who would escape various regimes
and settle there, and also by Cossacks who were mercenaries serving
various states. The region had this mythology around it as this place of
freedom and lawlessness, the borderland of empires."
By the 18th century, however, Russia had won much of the
territory—including Crimea—for itself, and the term "Wild Field" was
largely replaced with "Novorossiya."
''New Russia was Russia's answer to overseas colonialism at
roughly the same time," says King. "But what began in the late 18th
century as a form of colonialism—inviting in colonists to settle a
region that had been traversed by Tatars and nomads loyal to the Ottoman
Empire—became over time a province of the wider empire." Colonists
included Germans, Czechs, Greeks, Armenians, "you name it," says King.
But controlling the southern coastal territory isn't the only way to access Crimea from mainland Russia.
Planes of the German Luftwaffe fly over the Sea of
Azoz in 1940. The Nazis tried to build a bridge over the Kerch Strait
but only got so far before the Russians advanced on Crimea in 1944.
Photograph from Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Hitler's Bridge
During World War II, Adolf Hitler commissioned a bridge to
cross the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from Russia and
demarcates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea, at its narrowest point.
"Hitler saw Crimea and Ukraine as a new place where the
German peasantry could renew itself. It would be Germany's breadbasket,"
says Harry Bennett, a professor of history at Plymouth University in the U.K. and author of The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road.
A bridge would also allow the German 17th Army to get thousands of tons
of supplies along southern routes deeper into the mainland.
But the Nazis only got so far before the Russians advanced
on Crimea in 1944. "When the Russians got there, they found a partially
built bridge and all the tools to finish it," says Bennett. "The irony
is that Hitler's bridge, instead of moving German troops into the heart
of Asia, helped bring Russian troops to Berlin."
But the winter and the icy strait took their toll on the
hastily finished bridge, says Bennett. "Sections of the bridge just
dropped off into the Kerch Strait and the bridge was abandoned."
Armed militiamen from the pro-Russian Donetsk
People's Republic pose proudly during Ninth of May celebrations in the
eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The separatist forces are party to a
ceasefire signed Friday in the Belarusian city of Minsk.
Photograph by Janos Chiala, NurPhoto/Corbis
"A Path to Russia"
Now Putin must figure out how to traverse the strait. Earlier this year, the day after Crimea was officially annexed, Putin called for a new rail and road bridge.
Speaking from Crimea's port city of Sevastopol, Gennady Basov, head of
the Russian Bloc political party, says his people would support any
pro-Russian forces or plans that would forge a link to the
mainland—whether from Ukraine's coast or from Russian territory.
"What people are saying about Russian troops crossing into
Ukraine is something only an American could believe," says Basov. "The
fighters are volunteers, fighting for their own land. If they were to
make it all the way to Crimea, we would welcome that."
As for a bridge linking Crimea to the mainland, Basov tells
National Geographic: "Kerch—yes, it's planned. Crimchani [Crimeans]
want it. We want free access and a path to Russia."
Despite the advance of both pro-Russian and
Ukrainian troops, locals in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol take to the
beaches to enjoy the good weather.
Photograph by Alexander Ermochenko, EPA/Corbis
RELATED:
– Behind the Headlines: Who Are the Crimean Tatars?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered